The Opinion in particular allowed the CoR to feed the concerns of the EU's local and regional authorities into the preparations of the European Commission of its proposal for the 7th Environment Action Programme (EAP). The activities of the rapporteur and of the CoR Secretariat have contributed to increasing the profile, interinstitutional role and visibility of the CoR in the field of better implementation and the the 7th Environment Action Programme, in particular the conference co-organised by the ENVE Secretariat with the European Commission "Driving better implementation in our cities & regions – a key element of the 7th Environment Action Programme" & Launch of the CoR/EC Technical Platform for Cooperation on the Environment" on 5 December 2012. This conference was very well attended and saw a very good press coverage and high-level participation, including the participation of of Commissioner Janez Potocnik, CoR Vice-President Mercedes Bresso, European Parliament PETI Committee Chair Erminia Mazzoni, Member of the European Parliament Jo Leinen, and the incoming Irish Presidency. The European Parliament adopted on 12 March 2013 its resolution on the underlying European Commission Communication. The European Parliament resolution refers on several occasions explicitly to local and regional authorities and their key role in implementation, and calls also on the Commission to promote knowledge and capacity-building "in close cooperation with the Committee of the Regions". The resolution reflects several key recommendations of the CoR Opinion, namely it: • calls on the Commission to examine whether greater participation by local authorities throughout the process of defining environmental policy would be useful: including the possibility of setting up teams to transpose environmental law at regional and local level; • urges the Commission to re-consider demands for the introduction of a best-practise database, allowing best practice in implementation to be disseminated across Member States and across regional and local authorities; • calls for exploring the possibility of setting up partnership implementation agreements between the Commission and individual Member States, • urges the Commission set up an Environmental Law Inspection Unit, whose role will be to assist in the implementation of the environmental legislation. • calls for a more dissemination of best practices between the Member States, and between the regional and local authorities that are responsible for implementing EU legislation, as well as through greater cooperation with the European Institutions; • stresses the need to improve the role of the European Environment Agency in improving data on compliance and implementation; • urges the Commission and the Member States to help improve the knowledge and capacity of the people involved in implementing environmental legislation, at regional and local levels.